Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday May 26, 2011 @06:01PM
from the but-sir-patriot-must-be-in-all-caps dept.

Bloomberg News reports that, as expected, today "[t]he US Senate approved a four-year extension of provisions in the USA Patriot Act allowing law enforcement to track suspected terrorists with roving wiretaps. ... The measure goes to the House for final passage before being sent to President Barack Obama for his signature. The surveillance powers would be extended until June 1, 2015." The story mentions that the Patriot Act powers this approval includes would extend "to so-called 'lone wolf' suspects who aren't affiliated with any terrorist group."

If your congressman or senator failed to vote against this violation of the fourth and fifth amendments, he or she has violated their oath of office. Don't vote for them again unless you want this shit to continue.

people like you who think this retarded shit are the reason we have nothing but the shitty futuristic frying pan to look forward to. run a campaign for someone in your home town who shows promise. ffs run yourself. if enough people did it and fucked with the system the system might churn out some results other than this crap. but no, you're an ass. and everyone around you is an ass too. like 290 million asses. and we wonder why things are going to hell.

With some research the problems and their solutions can be uncovered. I have determined that the primary cause of the politicians' lack of concern for their constituents is that the voting districts are too huge. House districts were originally supposed to be 30,000 people and not more than 50,000 people. With smaller districts comes greater access to office because the barrier to entry is greatly reduced. No longer are expensive media campaigns and popular personalities the benefit they are when a district is 700,000 people. Another issue resolved is the effectiveness of lobbying. The number of lobbyists required to lobby 10,000 people is so high that it makes it cheaper to just develop superior products than attempt to influence Congress. Unfortunately, every part of the Government and all special interests stand to lose with by returning power to the citizens, so the resources required to fight such a battle are unlikely to present themselves.

1) The assumption that people's wishes and needs line up along geographic boundaries. No matter if it's 2, 30,000 or 700,000 people in a district.2) First past the pole systems. People can't be divided into two groups. In my country we for example have 9 major political parties with each different combination of the following: [liberal vs. conservative, religious vs. atheist, socialist vs. capitalist, enviromentalist vs. industrialist].

It means that government happens by coalition, which means that the compromises are made between parties, instead of between groups within parties (tea party anyone?). I think it's a more transparent process.

I feel it also gives a lot more power to significant minorities as long as they're willing to compromise.

Next to that it allows for more rejuvenation in the political system, as even a relatively small group can get a foothold and grow from there into replacing established groups.

Amen, brother. I vote for who I want in office, not 'the best that could win'. I hate it when people say a vote for a third party candidate is a wasted vote. It's that attitude that ensures we are stuck with the status quo.

Ah, the old "run for office yourself" gambit. It makes you look all, like, cool and worldly and stuff, and liberates you from actual thought.

I did work on two state campaigns here in California, for people I initially liked. Learned they were just sociopaths in it for themselves like all the others.

OK, I'll run. Do you have a great big pile of money I can use? Or donors who will give to a nobody like me? Oh, and when I am beaten because some union, Party or corporation backed scumbag pwns me in the culpable media, can you make sure my job is there to go back to?

Oh, wait, I have a rather interesting personal past. Nothing criminal, just interesting and experimental. The media will go after *that* to the exclusion of all else, including actual issues.

Give me or point me to a workable strategy for a real citizen politician, who hasn't exactly lived the life of a monk, to pull it off, and I'll seriously consider it.

There are unfortunately only two options in US politics: The Frying pan and the shiny new futuristic looking Frying pan with a non-stick coating

This is not an issue of the two party system, this is an issue of "the public is largely ignorant."

It always annoys me in these discussions when someone suggests the structure of our politics is somehow to blame. That's blaming someone else for our failings, it has nothing to with the number of boxes on a ballot. If more than 50% of the voters wanted the patriot act gone, republicans AND democrats would be slinging mud about "I'd get rid of it a FULL DAY SOONER than my opponent would!" Getting rid of it does -not- require voting in a third party (which, not for nothing, would require us to get rid of the first-past-the-post voting system we have, a move which WOULD require a third party to be voted in).

It's stuck with us because the voters these days are morons who are scared of foreigners with bombs, and are exactly the type of fools who would give up essential liberty for a little bit of security. Politicians are salesmen: they're going to give the customer what they want, not what they need.

We're too gullible when they're campaigning if we seriously believe voting for anyone of any party and then doing nothing else has a good chance of changing anything. Politicians usually don't have the power to lead us very far, politicians can't convince us that the patriot act is an abomination, most of them don't even try. Cable news isn't going to try, terrorism and stoking our fears is too sexy and gets too many viewers to kill that golden goose. To get rid of the PATRIOT act requires those US to inform other voters of what a bad idea it is. Voting for a third party candidate is, in my humble opinion, purely a waste of time if you're just going to check "libertarian" or "green" and do nothing else about it.

That is a tall order. And, full disclosure, I'm busy trying to cure spinal cord injuries and play videogames to campaign against the patriot act. I don't have a problem with apathy, but I do find fault with lying to ourselves that the 2 party system is the problem.

Politicians are salesmen: they're going to give the customer what they want, not what they need.

Politicians take it a step further. They make people think they need what the politician wants. How else could somebody possibly be elected with a campaign entirely based upon Hope and Change? The problem with politics is that in order to make it you must be a slimy bastard. People can fantasize all they want about how they could go in and fix politics but the fact is that you're not going to get past your local city council without back room deals and backstabbing the public.

Which is why I advocate doing away with elections altogether and implement Sortition. Essentially. Use the same system we use when selecting juries than when selecting representatives. A representative sample of the population is better than a man at representing the population wouldn't you think?

Yes a Jury will lack experience in technical matters. But so are politicians. Like with politicians and like juries in trials, experts can be provided to inform the jury to take decisions. Unlike politicians, they won't make false promises,won't take decisions to advance a non existent political careers, nor are they as likely to cheat for personal gain, since they would be different people from different social levels.

The problem with random selection is that as bad as most politicians are, at least at the federal level most are a bit above average intelligence. The biggest advantage I see is that we'd be likely to get a much more moral bunch. The question becomes, how rapidly will power corrupt them?

Experts are already bought and paid for with research funding, and failing to walk the party line gets you out of a job and out of your position of an advisor.

Dr David Nutt, advisor for drug policy to the Labour government, said marijuana shouldn't be reclassified to Class B (up from the C they dropped it to) and should be regulated, but legalised. Weed was reclassified, Nutt was fired.

It's just not true. Some things stay in place because it's advantageous for politicians to keeps them there (a.k.a. arrogance of power). There was obvious majority opposition to ObamaCare, which didn't stop it from becoming law. For something like the "Patriot Act" to be repealed or discontinued, opposition would have to be both numerous and VERY LOUD. Or the people in the legislature would have to be honorable, fat chance.

This is an issue where republicans can be held accountable. You should not act like it isn't, especially now that you've seen the votes.

As someone who has always voted democrat, I'm not particularly broken up if you for some reason pin this on the republicans. You should realize though that the democrats didn't come out fighting against it either. For the most part, those that didn't vote FOR it passed the chance to bring up the issue. They avoided the opportunity to educate the public that "your children are still a zillion times more likely to die from choking on a hotdog than they are to die in a terrorist attack of any sort, so calm

However, they've recognized that the only way to impact politics on a meaningful level is to join the existing two party system.

Am I the only one who noticed that the Tea Party was co-opted and neutralized by the Republican party? It wasn't without huuuuge expenditure of time, effort, and money that the Tea Party was redefined from "radical splinter group in opposition to the Republocrat system" to "militant wing of the Republican party".

No, you're right. I've been involved in the "tea parties" (not the lower case) since Bush was in office. The first one I attended was a fund raiser for Ron Paul - not that I'm a big Paul fan, but I was interested in the connections to be made there.

After the elections, it took off and was great for a while. After the April 2008 events, it started attracting broader support from conservatives, though, and that was the beginning of the end.

As noted, the name of the bill is completely unrelated because they took the unrelated bill and completely replaced it with the patriot act renewal. This is the type of practice that happens all the time. Running the congress app on my android has opened my eyes to the shenanigans that are pulled daily. Our government is a sham, folks.

it's shenanigans but it is inevitable shenanigans, as long as bills may be amended things like this will happen, if bills were prohibited from being amended after introduction nothing would ever get done (not that i am 100% opposed to that).

requiring that bills remain on a particular topic is weak and then requires that the scope and extent of "topic" be defined such that it would be just wide enough for the widest legitimate bill but narrow enough to block out the bullshit, for everyones personal defini

Maybe people will start to finally learn that the choices they are fed are bullshit and that both A and B are part of the greater subject -- C. If you vote for A, it benefits C. If you vote for B, it benefits C. Instead of idiots arguing "derp derp derp red versus blue" they might finally invest that energy into understanding what is really going on and doing something about it. Then again, probably not.

I'm sure the president has the ability to veto this though. Surely he will? All these people that were so intent on voting this past election for "change" because the new jackass was going to be entirely different from the last jackass are surely going to have saved us from evil, right? So their pony will do everything he can to overthrow the USAPATRIOT Act, right? That must be why we haven't heard him say a single damn word about it. At all. Because he's just holding his tongue, so he can wield the veto power, yeah?

I'm sure everyone will finally stop investing all of their energy in Obama's birth certificate and being raging homophobes and marching around abortion clinics so they can focus on things that are actually impacting our entire way of life, like government oppression and the absolute corruption of government by corporate shills. Right?

And then we see people still thinking that there is some major difference between people wearing 'D' or 'R' labels, rather than between honest people and liars, and true "public servants" (as in, *Representatives* of *Us, the People*) and ones who pretend to be, to advance their agenda and get rich in the process...

And, before you start protesting, saying that all he wanted to do is to amend it with some additional "gun rights" language, it was only one of his several proposed amendments (picked by Media for obvious reasons of further polarization of us). I guess it was quite a brilliant move to provoke at least some discomfort of cognitive dissonance in the minds of mainstream NRA-supporting republicans, who *also* see absolutely no harm in PATRIOT act!

Maybe people will start to finally learn that the choices they are fed are bullshit and that both A and B are part of the greater subject -- C. If you vote for A, it benefits C. If you vote for B, it benefits C.

That is why we should always vote third party. It isn't about the third party actually winning - it is about putting the fear of blindly serving C into the parties that do win.

If your congressman or senator failed to vote against this violation of the fourth and fifth amendments, he or she has violated their oath of office. Don't vote for them again unless you want this shit to continue.

-jcr

I hope this is a lesson to everyone regarding temporary suspension of powers. There is NO SUCH THING AS TEMPORARY. Once you give them away they are gone until the next revolution and re-establishment of laws.

Wikipedia: The Banking Act of 1933... introduced banking reforms...commonly known as the Glass–Steagall Act... provisions that prohibit a bank holding company from owning other financial companies were repealed on November 12, 1999.

I hope this is a lesson to everyone regarding temporary suspension of powers. There is NO SUCH THING AS TEMPORARY. Once you give them away they are gone until the next revolution and re-establishment of laws.

I don't think you quite have the hang of how things work in a democracy.

After the Civil War, black Americans were free, but then segregation laws were passed in some states, but they were ultimately struck down. The United States once had a constitutional amendment prohibiting alcohol, and then it was undone as very unpopular by another constitutional amendment. During World War 2, Americans had their spending controlled by ration books for things like food, gasoline, and clothing. That's over. During World War 2, American media and mail was censored by the government. That's over. Until recently, cities and states could place onerous restrictions or prohibitions on the ownership of firearms by law abiding citizens, but that has been struck down.

Senate passes Patriot Act changes [usatoday.com]Posted 3/1/2006 11:11 AM Updated 3/1/2006 9:48 PMBy John Diamond, USA TODAYWASHINGTON — The Senate added civil liberties protections to the USA Patriot Act on Wednesday, clearing the way for renewal of the anti-terrorism law passed shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.The 95-4 vote ended months of bipartisan debate centering on privacy rights. Subsequent procedural votes Wednesday showed enough Senate support to move the bill this week to the House for final passage and then to President Bush.

Most Americans are OK with spying on people in direct contact with terrorist organizations [state.gov], or who are plotting an attack.

If your congressman or senator failed to vote against this violation of the fourth and fifth amendments, he or she has violated their oath of office. Don't vote for them again unless you want this shit to continue.

I want to make a point here. I know many-a-commenter likes to equate the democrats and republicans, saying they are both pro-corporate, and both *equally* bad for us. And yet when I see roll calls on votes, as you will see here, there is a striking trend among the issues that most americans (of all parties) are not getting represented corre

If I were cynical (which I am!), I would say that both parties ensured passage of the PATRIOT act just to keep things "the way they are". Democrats, being more vulnerable in the next election cycle, had to cut their losses by having some of the most vulnerable ones splitting from the main party line.

So, in some way, I think that I respect the tiny minority of 4 republicans who voted against it way more than 18 democrats. If only that I can think that they voted for their

I disagree, in that I believe firmly that if education were massively improved (and I mean massively), many of the other problems would become obvious to the majority of people as would the solutions. People function with split realities, but not well, and the more extreme the split the greater the discomfort. Deliberately worsen that discomfort through high quality (and maximal quantity) education. These will be the people who do the voting in 20 years time and who will also be the candidates then as well. Superior voters with superior candidates to choose will necessarily improve the situation as a whole.

Those will also be the businesspeople in that timeframe and thus will be making more rational decisions on what jobs are appropriate to be overseas and what jobs are appropriate here.

An informed electorate, or so Plato tells us, will also be less eager to go to war and less eager to blindly follow populist leaders. Indeed, he made it an essential criterion for a functional democracy. The experience of the last decade tells us he was right on the dangers of ignorance, so it seems worth testing whether he was right on the benefits of knowledge and wisdom.

Education alone won't fix all the issues, but I see no reason why - over time - it wouldn't solve a good number. Combine it with quality public healthcare and you solve many of the problems that ill-health cause (weakened economy, reduced opportunity, reduced flexibility, inferior mobility, desires for feel-good politics and/or substance-abuse, etc.)

That last one is worth reflecting on a bit. Religion may be the opiate of the masses, but feel-good politics is crack cocaine. Neither is good for you, both should be avoided where possible, but populist politicians are infinitely more dangerous than populist preachers. Jim Jones killed less than a thousand in total, fanatical politicians in 1914-1918 were managing to average that per day per nation for four years.

State-recognized marriage doesnt really seem like an impressive example of "government getting too big", since its something governments have done for the last thousand or so years, and has been regarded for basically all of them as a good thing. Perhaps you disagree with which unions the state recognizes, but that doesnt mean "government is too big"; they would technically have to be bigger to recognize more unions.

An example of "bigger government" would be "We the Fed think that we should handle your ret

Honestly, trying to paint republicans as favoring large expansive governments is disingenuous.

Here [nytimes.com] is a map which shows who voted for the extension "PATRIOT" Act. Count the red dots. Count the blue dots. Compare and contrast.

Democrats believe in all sorts of social programs, republicans dont; I didnt think that anyone disputed that.

No-one does. It's just that it's not the only area in which government can be expanded. Republicans are big believers in being "tough on crime", which in practice means stuffing prisons with harmless weed junkies. Then there's those unconstitutional TSA "near-border" patrols. There's Guantanamo.

(Yeah, all that stuff is now tacitly maintained by D for their schemes, but it was created by R.)

Actually some of the points are valid.
Our schools are receiving less and less money, reducing our GPA as a whole and decreasing our abilities to field educated people in our society.
The issues in Texas where they have put creationism in books, a fundamentally specific religious ideology towards christianity.
The issue where the Church somehow gets a pass on pedoiphilia without being prosecuted.
Republicans do have that ideology, but constantly increase government, look at both Bushes vs Clinton.
What they

Oh god, here it is. The latest in fear buzzword technology. "Hunker down", WMD, axis of evil, and now the "lone wolf". I miss when "lock box" was the stupidest of these pre-9/11. The worst part is, the media keeps using these deceitful memes and people just keep eating bowl after bowl of this shit.

Lone wolf is particularly bad. Wolves are horrible hunters when solitary. They're only a significant threat to anything in packs. (The German U-Boat fleet discovered that, too, when they became incapable of forming their own wolfpacks.)

If you want a meme that describes solitary madmen, "lone lolcat" would be more effective. Cats are dangerous on their own. Just ask a cheezburger.

You guys may not know this, but I consider myselfâ¦a bit of a loner. I tend to think of myself as a one man wolf pack. And then about 10 years ago, a cow-orker introduced me to/., and I thought â¦wait a second, could it be? And now I know for sure, I just added 1 million more geeks to my wolf pack. Millions of us wolves running around the internet together, looking for Beowulf Clusters & Turing Completeness. So tonight, we make a toast!

The nature of government is expansionary. Since "lone wolves" have no ties to terrorism and few obvious characteristics, intensive surveillance and broad restrictive measures must be wielded against 100% of population.

"Temporary security measures" rarely do, since the problem of keeping a country safe is never truly solved. All the DoJ has to do is point to the myriad domestic terrorist groups as justification for extending the PATRIOT act. There will always be radicals who want to take down the US government, and thus there will always be something for the DoJ to point to.

So, more needle in a haystack stuff, we need to violate everybody's privacy just in case one in the 7billlion people on the planet hate us. Didn't they use to hate us for our freedom? Not a problem anymore....

If it is my standard to prevent mutilation of teens, then I am self centered
If it is my standard to prevent stoning of people, then I am self centered
If it is my standard to require due process and truth, then I am self centered
If it is my standard to require people treated humanely, then I am self centered

If it is your standard that people be killed on your word, then you are.........
If it is your standard that people not receive due process, then you are.........
If it is your standard that vigila

The irony is you are the one being self centered.
"If it doesnt happen to me, then it is not my problem" is what you are saying.
True, I wish people would pick up a stick and start charging, but the realization is that you can not fight people with guns this way.
So people will stay in the situations they are in until someone with a bigger gun comes and says "hey, that is wrong"
If you are being beat on by three people and four people walk by, what do you hope happens?
I suggest you reflect further upon you

If you walk by two guys who are pounding the shit out of a kid, do you: A) Walk by, figuring the kid should "change that" if (s)he wants to quit getting beaten on-by vote, by force, you know, what have you. B) Call the police. C) Try to intervene yourself. If you would pick A, I would consider you an utter piece of shit, and I think you probably would too. But that's just what you're advocating here-refusing to help someone who is being hurt by someone more powerful and cannot d

Because now that Osama is dead, this abomination is now to protect from mysterious random people.... A nice way of saying the PATRIOT act will stop being extended when we get rid of every last human being who hates America.

Because now that Osama is dead, this abomination is now to protect from mysterious random people....

Lets clarify this a bit, shall we?

Yes, it will help protect us from mysterious people - currently unknown people who are in contact with terrorist groups, as well that people plotting attacks. That is the point after all, isn't it?

Although most people on Slashdot seem to oppose spying on anyone, most Americans are OK with spying on people in direct contact with terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda (organizations trying to kill large numbers of people, not Dennis Kucinich/Ron Paul voters... unless they ha

How on earth did this pap straight from the nattering neocon "expert" echo-chamber ever get modded up?The shredding of the bill of rights not about terrorism.The military spending is not about defense.The whole scam is designed to get powerful psychopaths even more power.They don't care about anything else, least of all the rights of mere people.Freedom for others would limit the psychopaths' power, but terror enhances it.Therefore these psychopaths have waged war not on terror but on freedom.Thus they are

And goes into a 4 year extension of Big Brother spying on what books you read or buy, what your emails contain, etc. It allows Big Brother to collect information on you sans any justification whatsoever - you don't even need to have ANY connection to a so-called "terrorist" or "terrorist organization" (like environmental groups, worker's rights groups, anti-corporate groups, etc...you know, horrific "terrorists").

It is not a "yawn". It is yet another shiv into the heart of so-called "liberty" and "freedom".

Land of the free, home of the brave MY ASS. Land of the chattle, home of pansy candyasses is more accurate.

Will ye tossers start voting something like greens or independents or whatever your alternative parties are already? I mean, last non-dem and non-rep president was 1850-1853.
And don't start whining about how it's never going to matter because of them needing more than whatever share. With that attitude, it never will matter. So grow a pair and start filling in some alternative boxes next election.

40% of Democrats voted against, compared to only 10% of Republicans. If you want to effect change, vote Democrat, straight ticket, every time. From President down to the local dogcatcher. When the GOP is dead and buried, then we can make a new party to the left of the Dems. If you try to go for third parties right now, then the right-wing fascists will use their short term benefit to pass laws that improve their electoral odds in the future. That is, after all, what they are doing right now. They've e

This is the act that allows the president to declare ANYONE an enemy combatant. Even an American Citizen. And disappear them. No representation. No trial. They just vanish, to be indefinitely imprisoned and even tortured. Hell, killed, for all we know. Since nobody knows that the person is being held, there's no limitation. Granted, this has gone wrong pretty much every time it has been used (documented incidents of innocent people being shipped off to gitmo for example) against innocent people a number of times. But hey, it has the word PATRIOT in it!

These assholes despise the citizenship of this country so much that they stuff something called the PATRIOT act with everything that is the opposite of patriotism and that directly undermines the country they claim the act is meant to protect. And we all sit around like fucking sheep, worrying about meaningless bullshit like birth certificates. And worse, all those jackholes who went around doing the "you HAVE to vote!" last year think that they've done their civic duty, because they voted. They chose between the giant douche and the turd sandwich and disavow any responsibility for upholding the status quo that continues to pin us all under its thumb.

You make those of us who oppose the Act look bad when you make blatantly misinformed rants about its actual contents. The PATRIOT Act is mostly related to special search-and-seizure power, not "enemy combatants".

Step 3: After society is good and locked down, pass extension of those laws.

Step 4: President gets elected that promises to remove these. President instead extends these.

Step 5: Another terrorist attack or foiled plot.

Step 6: Obviously this one law isn't working, so pass another.

Step 7: Progress and repeat until you can't take a shit without someone needing to be there to look up your asshole and make sure you aren't about to shit a bomb into the public toilet at the gas station.

Step 8: Children grew up with these laws, and they're just how things are.

Despite getting off to such a terrible start with the genocide of the "Native Americans" America was the last great hope for humans voluntarily creating a true democracy. The Constitution is an absolutely wonderful work. Future historians will marvel at it's elegance as the founding fathers saw, and attempted to protect against, what would come after them.

Sadly they underestimated the unstoppable inertia of the mass of the "sheeple".

... they underestimated the unstoppable inertia of the mass of the "sheeple".

I hate that term. It's so old and worn out. Rather than making the user of the term look "catchy" or "with it", it just makes them look like a crank. Try using the phrase "Too many citizens are uninformed and apathetic". Doesn't that sound better? And it might work better - even though the people you talk about may be "sheeple", people are very, very unlikely to listen to or join with those that insult them. So, if you want to hav

You think you understand how the Patriot Act allows the government to spy on its citizens. Sen. Ron Wyden says it’s worse than you know.
Congress is set to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the surveillance law as early as Thursday. Wyden (D-Oregon) says that powers they grant the government on their face, the government applies a far broader legal interpretation — an interpretation that the government has conveniently classified, so it cannot be publicly assessed or challenged. But one prominent Patriot-watcher asserts that the secret interpretation empowers the government to deploy ”dragnets” for massive amounts of information on private citizens; the government portrays its data-collection efforts much differently.....